Safeway saga: W/R investors reject July repayment plan

Aggrieved investors of Safeway Tilapia Corporative in the Western Region, have kicked against a decision by a new management of the company to start refunding their investments in July 2016, describing the move as “unrealistic and a ploy to shut them up.”

Some of the angry investors in Takoradi said “It’s one of those ploys and gimmicks of the Chief Executive. You take the startups of these young people who can be your sons and daughters as well as pension monies of these elderly people, do what you wanted to do with it, go hiding somewhere, and later send people to come and give us these unrealistic and hollow promises?”

At a meeting with over fifty investors in Takoradi on Friday, the Public Relations Officer of the firm, Mama Martey, told the investors that “the company under the new management team will start production of Tilapia Fingerlings in June and start payment from the proceeds in July this year”.
This, the angry investors whose attempt to take the PRO hostage was foiled by their leader Francis Affizie, found impossible and unrealistic.

They demanded that the company provides a well thought out plan realistic enough to guarantee repayment of their investments.

A resident who invested GHc 600,000 explained to Citi News that “We are left with just 10 days to start June. Can the fingerlings which take six weeks to mature, be ready in July for you to pay us from the proceeds? And when you use the proceeds from the first sale to pay some of the investors, which monies will you use to provide for new fingerlings?

He continued that “even the so-called new management is yet to find its feet on the ground, let alone begin production. You have already told us too that there was mismanagement in the first administration and so you have had to resort to selling some of the company’s properties in order to run your office and to defray some cost. How realistic will this July plan he [Mama Martey] keeps referring to?

For a 67 year old female pensioner who was shouting from a corner, “the solution to getting back our investments and its returns is to arrest Mama Martey and put him behind bars. He cannot come and speak what he wants without even a plan. If he is unable to tell us how realistic all that he is talking about is, they have deceived us which amounts to fraud. People have died, others have stopped schooling, and you are here repeating yourself.”

However, Mama Martey maintained that the July repayment date is feasible “according to our plan and we will start paying them from July”.

Meanwhile the investors insisted on the physical appearance of the former managers of the firm to “come answer questions as to what happened to all our monies. That is what we want now”.

They however warned the PRO, Mama Martey, to provide the former managers for query.

“…Otherwise, you will push us to take the laws into our hands,” Kofi Damoah, who invested Gh30, 000.